Will Mancini

I couldn’t resist telling this story. A church recently finished a Vision Pathway with Auxano. With the new mission articulation beginning to shift and shape the ministry (1 of the 5 questions discerned through the visioning work), a church staff wrote the following note on a workroom refrigerator:

BECAUSE OF OUR MISSION TO  ____________________ PLEASE KEEP THE COFFEE AREA CLEANED.

This note appears to be an application of what I encourage all of the time: Drip the vision (#visiondrip) into the daily conversation and daily flow of leadership. Tie everything you do back to the mission.

But this time the application went wrong. No, the mission of Christ is not provided for you to anchor your petty workroom rules and enforce it on everyone else. The mission is a reminder of what we are all supposed to be doing, so that I can start with my motives, my heart, my actions and my modeling.

Sometimes the real problem is not the problem. And this year at Qideas the real content was not the content. What do I mean? When you line up dozens of speakers on various topics for an immersion learning event, often the patterns and perspectives bring the richest insight. If you are not familiar with Qideas, check it out, and more importantly, the learning event from which Q was adapted- TED. Here are my moleskin reflections on the flight home:

#1 The day belongs to the sound bite savvy. At Q there is a visible timer, and speakers have 18, 9, or 3 minutes to share their idea. Two lucky people get an entire 36 minutes. Some people made fun of it, some people ignored it and some people aced it.   The bottom-line is that some 3-minute presentations where unmistakably more powerful than 36-minute ones. Taking the time to refine and articulate your ideas is critical. If you can’t deliver the entire message in 20 seconds, you’re not ready to give it at all. 

#2 Cross a boundary to birth a passion. The conviction that fuels a life of significant service is often birthed at a “boundary crossing.” You know when you have experienced a crossing like this (ethnic, social-economic, etc.) because you never see life the same: the short-term trip to Haiti, adopting a child, really befriending someone of a different race or sexual orientation. The list goes on. At Q you’re drenched with pleas for social action from nuclear arms to Tom’s shoes; from to “do good” coffee, to fathering the fatherless. While I appreciate the value of their cause-orientation, I think the effectiveness of involving people is found wanting. For example, many people passionately push the “boundary crossing” that marked their own soul, rather than helping people see their own boundary opportunities.

#3 Grow your mind by deconstructing your ideas. One highlight of Q was watching Brian McLaren and Scot McKnight dialogue on some hot theological topics.  Much attention was given to the definition of the gospel. One problem as leaders, is our ability to live with tons of packed assumptions in the words that are our most important words, like “gospel” or “salvation.” To deconstruct these words, is to trace the layering of ideas that hundreds of years of history and culture form.  In addition we can scrutinize our own life history to better understand why we believe what we believe. For example, McLaren challenged the audience by asserting the Old Testament idea of  salvation as NOT including the notion of eternal life. McKnight, reminded us how easy it is to take our understanding of the gospel out of its narrative context for the people of Israel.

#4 The bigger the context the better the insight.  The speakers who added the most value have some contextual expansion to leverage. The greater context may be geographic (world perspective), historical (bringing time-forged insights on a single topic), or specific combinations of technical disciplines.  The problem with expanding you context is that it always challenges the stasis our your current perspective.   

What’s my take-away?  These are my four questions:

• Where have I not taken time to sound-bite my most important ideas?
• What is the next boundary that God wants me to cross?
• What are the most common words in my leadership and what assumptions do they contain?
• How can I enlarge my context to bring more insight into my calling? 

Since I recently posted Craig Groeschel’s new values, I thought I’d share some common pitfalls when articulating values. Call it want you want: values, code, DNA, philosophy of ministry, etc.  Most attempts in ministry to articulate the core motives and driving convictions of the organization or movement don’t amount to much. Of course, our intent is  good, and we have a lot of energy the day they are written. But all to often, we simply populate another web page or birth some bullets for a membership class, without creating a tool that actually helps to shape culture. 

Why do values have so little value?

1. We have too many values. With every value your list, the gravity of you values weakens. If you have too many you have nothing. Your organization may value 10, 17, or even 50 things. The point isn’t to list them all, but to list the 4-6 that matter most. How many values have you spelled out?
2. Values are too generic. When a church regurgitates Rick Warren’s 5 Purposes, it has said nothing specific about the culture of your church. Don’t tell me that you value worship or fellowship or evangelism.  Go deeper. What drives how you worship or experience fellowship?  For example, does worship inspire wonder with the awe of God, or emphasize a personal authentic connection? Right now review your values and ask the question, “Which one of these could be said of every church in North America?”
3. Values are reactionary. Values should be the essence of what you stand for, not the reminder of what you don’t like. For three decades many of our statements have been littered with the terms “excellence” and “relevance.”  But do these terms really say that much about us? I recommend articulating what makes you relevant or what makes you excellent.  Keep pushing through until you get to the core. 
4. Values repeat doctrine. It’s important to be clear on your doctrinal belief system and these beliefs can and should influence your values. But values shouldn’t be limited by restating doctrine. For example you might believe in the authority of scripture or the priesthood of all believers. Again, free your values to show something more specific or in addition to the belief rather than just restating it. For example, one church stated the value of “Truth with Gentleness” to describe the manner with which they teach the whole counsel of God. How many of your values are redundant to doctrine?
5. Values aren’t actionable. Any value that does not give rise to a new thought, emotion, attitude or action is worthless.  I recommend creating a bullet list for every value as a running “demonstrated by…” list. Every team in the ministry can then flesh out the specific meaning and desired outcomes of the shared value in their context. If the code can’t “connect the dots” to  practice, then you won’t gain more than inactive intellectual assent. Are your values springboards for daily action? 
6. Values are too aspirational. If values represent more of what you want to be than what you are, you’ll immediately loose credibility as a leader. There is a time and place for vision, but that is different from values. Two-thirds of your values should be rooted in what you are today. What makes you great right now? Why will you win this week?  Again, don’t be afraid to have some aspirational content. But when you do, be sure to take the lead in sharing them as DNA dreams. Otherwise people will think that you’re smoking something.

So how valuable are your values? Could yours use refreshing? I would love to hear your thoughts or your example of re-articulated values.  After all, Craig Groeschel was man enough to refresh his.

I recently posted why every church is in transition. The next natural question is how do you lead in transition? While leading change is real work,  I think that most leaders make it more difficult than it has to be. Why? The single greatest problem in leading change has to do with the source of meaning in the organization. If you can keep your eye on the ball of meaning, then leading and experiencing change is a whole new ball game.

Here is one principle to focus on: If you want to lead change, change the common denominator first. Think of the common denominator as the most-likely, most common, source of meaning for people every day. The common denominator in your organization today is most likely “the how.” By “the how” I mean  how I, as an individual, get things done, and how we, as an organization, get things done.  The immediate challenge presented with this source of meaning is that “the how” must change to stay viable.  Therefore we want to anchor meaning in something deeper than the “how.” And there are at least three alternatives: what, why and where. (What are we ultimately doing? Why do we do what we do? Where is God taking us?) Properly understood and articulated these can and will sustain a timeless sense of shared meaning.

Therefore your four big roadblocks to leading transition are the four reasons why “the how” is so persistent, even addictive in becoming the deepest source of meaning. Consider:

1. The oppressive, automatic dailyness of “the how”
2. The concrete nature of “the how”
3. The personalities and relational connection within “the how”
4. The tendency to affirm and recognize “the how”

For all of us, “the how” stares is in the face daily almost forcing us to find meaning from it and the patterns, comfort, relational connections, and successes it creates.

But ultimately meaning is waiting to be discovered, found, nourished and celebrated in the what, the why and the where of the organization, not the how. Make no mistake, when vision is clear people are usually more than glad to change “the how.”

A recent consulting engagement provides a stunning illustration of “the how” as a common denominator.  While working with a church in Rochester, NY, I learned about Kodak’s massive decline in the last decade as a global juggernaut in film-based photography. At their peak, Kodak had 82,000 people in Rochester and had 85% of the world market share in film-based photographic imaging products. Now they have 7,000 people in the city and less the 20% of market share. The simple reason boils down to the problem of “the how” as common denominator. Ironically, they were the ones to invent and even patent digital-based photography methods. But the shear momentum and hubris of “the how,” that is,  making images using film, eclipsed the future of making images any other way. Rather than inventing and then leading the new day of photography, they invented it, only to let others to develop the future.

What if every day Kodak employees had been reminded:

1. Our “what” or our big idea is capturing image (and nothing else)
2. Our “why” is beauty, and cherishing human memories, and making image capture accessible to all.
3. Our “where” is doing whatever it takes in innovation and research to lead the world’s ability to capture images.

You can see very quickly how much meaning is creating without having to mention “the how” of film-based processing.

In the next few weeks I would love to meet you and share with you some of the experiences, principles, skills, and tools for discerning God’s direction and casting vision in your ministry.

ATLANTA CO:LAB (starts March, 30)

Tomorrow (no it’s not too late) come to Mountain Lake Church for the kick-off of the Atlanta Vision co::lab. This is the first of 5, 4 hour sessions that we will do (1-5pm), once a month on a Tuesday afternoon. The cost is $300 per month.  We are pretty much full, but we could take one or two more teams if you were really interested. E-mail me if you are interested. 

SAN ANTONIO: METHODIST LARGE CHURCH INITIATIVE (April 12-15)

This is going to be a great event with lots of opportunity to interact, including a pre-conference workshop. Here is more information. 

ORLANDO: EXPONENTIAL PRE-CONFERENCE LAB (April 19-20)

I will be leading a Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning time workshop (6 hours of training) before Exponential as well as leading some break-outs. I would love to meet you here, and it only costs $49. Sign up through Exponential. If you do mention this post to me via e-mail, and I will bring you a FREE collaboration cube. 

CHICAGO: Q CONFERENCE (April 27-19)

As always, I can’t wait for the unique Q Conference . This is a fabulous time to connect and if your going to be around, let me know.